While many pundits whistle past the graveyard of the Nov. 3 elections, the political professionals know the truth: There has been a stark shift of independents away from the Democrats.

Virtually all the recent polling data show it.

In a Gallup “generic” poll of registered voters last week, Republicans edged ahead of Democrats 48 percent to 44 percent. Republicans (who do better with “likely” voters) usually get skunked in such polls, and trailed Democrats by 50 percent to 44 percent as recently as July.

The independents are driving this movement. The poll found that independents favor the generic Republican candidate for Congress in 2010 by 52 percent to 30 percent, a whopping 22-point edge.

In the Democratic stronghold of Connecticut, a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday found Republican Rob Simmons trouncing incumbent Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, 49 percent to 38 percent.

That may be conditioned, as is every race, by local factors, including the relative strengths of the candidates (i.e., the widespread public perception that Mr. Dodd is corrupt). But, in state after state, the pattern is repeated. Independents are shying away from Democrats.

None of this should be surprising. The independents seek moderation. They tend to like America, and do not see the need to remake it in the image of a European social democracy. And they worry about jobs more than ideology.

Barack Obama won over the independents last fall by selling himself as a moderate: cool, thoughtful, capable, articulate. He talked about cutting the taxes of most Americans, getting spending under control and promoting a less divisive atmosphere in Washington. He seemed less arrogant and reckless on matters of foreign policy than George W. Bush, who appeared to be astounded that the pacification of Iraq turned into a long, hard, bloody, costly slog — and certainly made no effort to prepare Americans for such a painful struggle.

But President Obama has not governed as a moderate. He has governed from what, in American electoral politics, is pretty far left.

The Democrats, controlling the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time since Bill Clinton’s first term, forgot about courting the middle. As humans often do, they let power go to their heads.

The president pushed a $787 billion “stimulus” package loaded with goodies for liberal interest groups. He claimed it had to be passed immediately, before members even had time to read it, lest the unemployment rate reach 8 percent (it has since hit 10.2 percent). He and the Democrats cut out the Republicans, who might have moderated the package to include more stimulus for small business, America’s jobs engine. Small-business owners are not dearly beloved in the Democratic ranks, since they tend to support robust capitalism and oppose tax hikes and expansions of government.

He pushed through a budget with a massive deficit, loaded with the sort of pork-barrel earmarks he had pledged to oppose.

He redefined acts of Islamic terrorism as “man-made disasters” and apologized for America’s efforts, under his predecessors, to defend itself. Rather than embrace America’s great traditions of free speech, he attacked Fox News for criticizing him and dismissed middle-class protesters as “tea-baggers,” a derogatory sex term. He derided the Cambridge police, saying they “acted stupidly” in arresting one of his friends.

He embraced the left’s reforms in energy policy and health care, dismissing concerns that these approaches would drain family budgets or fuel deficits that threaten to destroy the dollar’s value and bury future generations under a mountain of debt.

The deficit, which should run about 3 percent of gross domestic product in a healthy economy, already is projected to be 11 to 12 percent. “And that’s scary,” notes Frank Ahrens of The Washington Post.

Even scarier, tax receipts in October fell 18 percent from the similar time last year, “a recipe for disaster” — not only for the country, but for Democrats in 2010.

One may debate whether Mr. Obama and the Congress under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are doing the right thing. But, from a purely political standpoint, it is clear they are turning off independent voters.

Independents seem notably alarmed by what Democrats want to do to health care.

In its Ohio poll released Thursday, Quinnipiac found voters oppose the House Democrats’ health-care bill, 55-36. A Gallup poll showed 38 percent of Americans favor the bill, while 47 percent oppose it. An AP-GfK poll conducted before, during and after the House health-care vote found 39 percent of Americans supporting it, 45 percent opposing it. Independents are fueling this movement, since Republicans ardently oppose the effort, and Democrats ardently support it.

Independents still like and admire Mr. Obama as a person, and would obviously love to see him move toward the center — which is where most presidents, given the nature of the office, usually end up.

It’s not clear, however, whether he and the Democrats will do that before November 2010.

Edward Achorn is The Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor ( eachorn@projo.com).